BROKEN BENGAL: Tropes of Conviviality and Fracture in Bangla Fiction.
This essay examines how Bangla fiction employs the trope of conviviality as a means to provide an affective understanding of the partition of Bengal. Of principal concern is how Bengali writers, regardless of their religious affiliation, insist upon the existence of a common Bengali across the relig...
| Publicado en: | Kritika Kultura no. 45; pp. 4 - 31 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Kritika Kultura
Nov2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=187377120&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 187377120 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 20946937 786B jtl: Kritika Kultura issn: 20946937 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Nov2024 iid: 45 pid: 51553 pub: Kritika Kultura artinfo: ui: 187377120 ppf: 4 ppct: 27 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 3.3MB tig: atl: BROKEN BENGAL: Tropes of Conviviality and Fracture in Bangla Fiction. aug: au: O'Connor, Maurice affil: Universidad de Cádiz su: Bengali literature Historiography Partition of Bengal, 1947 sug: subj: Bengali literature Historiography Partition of Bengal, 1947 keyword: Bangla literature conviviality Hindu-Muslim divide historiography Partition of Bengal reflective nostalgia ab: This essay examines how Bangla fiction employs the trope of conviviality as a means to provide an affective understanding of the partition of Bengal. Of principal concern is how Bengali writers, regardless of their religious affiliation, insist upon the existence of a common Bengali across the religious divide. I open my essay with a brief historiographic introduction to the fracturing of Bengali society, contextualizing the backstories that are rarely fleshed out within Bangla fiction yet are elliptically present. Conviviality is the term I use to frame a common Bangla culture, and I explore the concept through Ivan Illich, Thomas Erikson and Tina Steiner. While conviviality is, moreover, applied to modern multicultural societies, I argue that it is also a valid concept for the plural society of pre-partition Bengal. I shall examine the dramatic structures employed which aid in the discovery of new perspectives on the societal fracture that occurred during the partition of Bengal. A phenomenological approach, I argue, is often used to represent this fracture. Bangla fiction seeks to represent the structures of experience as presented to an individual rather than being reflecting prior truths as presented through history. This concept is explained through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the phenomenological world. I shall also draw attention to texts that narrate the existence of cross-class solidarity. By focusing on class instead of religion, I identify an alternative way to configure the trope of conviviality within Bangla literature. Finally, I examine how literature explores the loss of this syncretic Bengali culture through the specific trope of nostalgia. Here, I employ Svetlana Boym's understanding of the term and her distinction between reflective and restorative types. Regarding the former, reflective nostalgia acknowledges the imperfect process of remembrance, and I argue that Bangla literature employs this form of nostalgia, mediated through what Boym defines as "individual and cultural memory" (49). pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Kritika Kultura is the property of Kritika Kultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Kritika Kultura holder: Kritika Kultura dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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